


the spaces between my fingers

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Hospitals, Implied Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Possibly Triggering, i dont know why i did this to them, im really sorry, iwaoi - Freeform, so please be careful, they didnt deserve this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:44:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>it takes iwaizumi hajime ten minutes to get to his high school from his house directly, a fact that he has become reacquainted to in recent weeks. he still catches himself arriving inordinately early to class sometimes, or absent-mindedly taking a roundabout way through back alleys and the local park, or buying extra melon bread at lunch, or sharing secret grins with an empty seat, or waiting by the gate after classes and volleyball practice for someone who never arrives.</i>
</p>
<p>or: oikawa falls apart and iwaizumi is left with the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the spaces between my fingers

**Author's Note:**

> this started as an experimental fic to try out a new writing style and ended as... well, this. 
> 
> unbeta'd.
> 
> there is implied self-harm and an implied suicide attempt - please, please, PLEASE be careful.

_i'll watch the night turn light blue_  
_but it's not the same without you_  
_because it takes two to whisper quietly_  
_the silence isn't so bad_  
_'till I look at my hands and feel sad_  
_'cause the spaces between my fingers_  
_are right where yours fit perfectly_

**vanilla twilight – owl city**

.

.

.

.

.

Iwaizumi Hajime is eighteen years old when he wakes up in the middle of the night, back dripping with cold sweat. He stumbles down to the kitchen, opens the fridge, decides that what he’s looking for won’t be found, and sits down heavily on the ground, ignoring the chill of the tiles against his legs.

The rising sun finds him still there, eyes staring blankly ahead, eyelids heavy but never quite enough to drop, propped up by guilt and memories. Neat little slashes and white little pills, crimson splashed across porcelain wrists so frail they might be made of glass. A whitewashed room smelling of antiseptic, the quiet whispers of desperate prayers and heartfelt pleas for people exhausted of existing, minds that won’t be found, wounds that won’t be healed.

Iwaizumi Hajime is eighteen years old and has learned that the world can be cruel. He thought he knew before but he didn’t, was unaware of the private battles of those whose minds have seen fit to wage war against themselves, who slip knives as easily across their wrists as the fingers of lovers would caress them. That the world saw fit to knock men – no, children - aside, convincing them to mistake tragedy for beauty, sanity for weakness.

It takes Iwaizumi Hajime ten minutes to get to his high school from his house directly, a fact that he has become reacquainted to in recent weeks. He still catches himself arriving inordinately early to class sometimes, or absent-mindedly taking a roundabout way through back alleys and the local park, or buying extra melon bread at lunch, or sharing secret grins with an empty seat, or waiting by the gate after classes and volleyball practice for someone who never arrives.

_“Please, Hajime. Please.”_

The only voicemail he has ever saved on his phone, February 10th, 3:25am. From someone who was still a child, borne aloft by dreams and hopes, higher and higher while some relentless barrage of doubt and insecurity slowly eroded the ground away from underneath him, until one day the world saw it fit to melt the wax and clip his wings for good measure, letting him plummet into a bottomless darkness. (The ground would have been too merciful of an end, it seems.)

Iwaizumi sighs before getting up and returning to his room. He doesn’t bother with the bottle on his desk, given to him by the lady with the smile that never reached her eyes and the voice that dredges up the words he screams to himself at night like a broken record. The one his parents made him see, as if the agony of having the other half of his very existence being ripped away from him could be healed by the contents of a first-aid kit and the soft whisperings of someone paid to tell him there was something wrong with him, that pointed out the pieces of his sanity scattered all around him but wouldn’t – couldn’t – tell him how to put them back together.

His phone buzzes. Matsukawa. He leaves it ringing, the sound slowly filling the room, unfamiliar and intrusive. Iwaizumi has changed a lot of things. He always has his ringer on, except when he’s in class and even then, he checks it obsessively before lecture begins to make sure it’s on vibrate.

Over the past week, he’s accidentally ordered the wrong thing at the local coffee shop twice, something too sweet with a name that’s too long to remember (except when he’s trying to forget, he supposes), chokes it down. Pretends that the wetness of his eyes is from disgust at the coffee, or a yawn, or the rain outside that must have started right before he entered.

“Iwaizumi? It’s Matsukawa. Hanamaki and I were wondering how you’ve been, with… um, all that’s happened. Tsurumi-sensei gave us some assignments and stuff for you too. So let me know if you’re free to meet up sometime, or if I can stop by your house, or something… Yeah. Um. Hanamaki and I hope you feel better soon.”

The voicemail ends, blessed relief. Iwaizumi lays down again on the floor. Another new habit. When Iwaizumi lays on his bed now, it feels strangely empty. The bed he’d begged his parents to replace for years for the fault of being too small is now too big - there is too much room on it: the second pillow, a space for impossibly-long limbs and a slender waist, the spaces between his fingers that feel cold, so cold.

He picks up his phone, tosses it aside, shrugs on an old shirt and jeans.

_“Please, Hajime. Please.”_

It takes Iwaizumi only eight minutes to get the hospital from his house directly, a fact that he has become uncomfortably familiar with in the last few weeks. The lady at the reception desk no longer asks his name, prints off his visitor’s ID sticker with a wordless smile, hands it to him gingerly, like he might bleed if she so much as touches him with a corner or an edge.

Two flights of stairs, one left turn, two right turns. He could walk there in his sleep (if he slept anymore, that is), can see the too-bright bulletin boards and the even-brighter flyers plastered over them, too gaudy for a hallway filled with lightless eyes and heavy silences, in his dreams (if he can call them that; thirty-minute or one-hour periods of fitful relief, each one cut short by memories of soft hands and tousled hair and eyes flecked with liquid gold).

He opens the door. The nurse on duty sees him, leaves the room quickly. He recognizes her. He does not know their names. They might know his. They tried to talk to him once, he thinks. He’s not really sure anymore.

Iwaizumi sits down in the chair by the bedside. The heart-rate monitor hums steadily. He begins to talk, hopes that someone is listening. The doctor told him that it was still possible, that comatose patients could sometimes still hear the words being spoken around them. So he talks. He talks about melon bread and inside jokes, walking through back alleys and the local park, the new volleyball team. About the nice lady who doesn’t smile with her eyes, picking his phone ringtone, getting coffee, Matsukawa and Hanamaki. About how his bed feels too big, how his room feels empty, how his fingers feel so, so cold. _Without you._

When the nurse opens the door at the end of visiting hours, Iwaizumi Hajime is asleep, the remnants of tears still on his face, hand threaded through a set of slender, pale fingers.

 

**Author's Note:**

> //hugs iwaizumi and oikawa very tightly//
> 
> im sorry i dont have any excuses
> 
> (i probably won't continue this? but here is a concept: oikawa wakes up, iwaizumi and him help each other through everything that dragged them down, and they end up happy together)


End file.
